XXVII. The Limits of State Duties - continued

§ 368. We saw (in Chap. XXIII.) that at a later stage of evolution a society may acquire a nature fundamentally unlike the nature it had at an earler stage; and we drew the corollary that a theory of State-duties appropriate when it had one nature must be inappropriate when it has tho other nature. Here we have to draw a further corollary. The implied change of nature absolves the State from various functions for which it was at first the best agent; and generates for these functions other and better agents. While war was the business of life, while militant organization was imperative, .and while coercive rule was needful for disciplining improvident men and curbing their anti-social natures, agencies of a non-governmental kind could not develop. Citizens had neither the means, nor the experience, nor the characters, nor the ideas, needed for privately co-operating in extensive ways. Hence all large purposes devolved on the State. If roads had to be made, if canals had to be cut, if aqueducts had to be built, the only instrumentality was governmental power exercised over slaves.

:But with decline of militancy and rise of industrialism -the decay of the system of status and growth of tho system of contract-there have gradually become possible, and have gradually arisen) multitudinous voluuLblry asso4 THE LIMITS OF STA'fE-DUTIES. 229 ciations among citizens for discharging numerous kinds of functions. This result has been consequent on modifications of habits, dispositions, and modes of thought, which have been, generation after generation,·· produced by the daily exchange of services under agreement, in place of the daily enforcing of services. One result is that there can now bo achieved without governmental 'power) various ends which in early days governmental power alone could achieve. In discussing the sphere of State-action we must take into account this profoundly significant fact. More than this: we must take into account a manifest inference. The changes above indicated are far from being ended; and we are justified in concluding that with further progress of them there may rightly go further relinquishment of functions which the State once discharged.

§ 369. That such relinquishment of functions by the State, and assumption of them by other agencies, constitutes a pro. gress, should be manifest to all who know anything about the laws of organization: though, unhappily,tbis truth seems no Inore appreciated by; them than by those who bogan their school-days with ill king nonsense-verses and pass their mature years in pus} ing forward ad captandum legislation. For concerning indi idual organisms and social organisms, nothing is more eel" ain than that advance from lower to higher, is marked b increasing heterogeneity' of structures and increasing sub ivision of functions. In both cases there is mutual dependence of parts, which becomes greater as the type become higher; and while this implies a pro grossing limitation f one function to one part, it implies also a progressing fi ness of such part fOfsuch function. When, some fifty ears ago, lVIilne-Edwards gave to this IJrinciple or developnjlent in animals the name" physiological division of labour," he recognized the parallelism between vital economy and social economy; and this parallelism has been since growing: ever clearer. But though among the 230 JUSTICE.

cultured few, there is now some vague recognition of it; and though more especially the increasing division of labour which the industrial part of the social organi.sm rlisplays, has been made familiar by political economists, and the ad vantages of it duly insisted upon; there is little or no perception of the truth that the principle holds also within the controlling part, and throughout its relations to the other parts. Even without the facts which illustrate it, we might be certain that specialization, with consequent limitation, normally takes place in the regulative structures of a society as in all its other structures; that advantage is achieved by such specialization and limitation; and that any reverse change constitutes a retrogression. fJ."'he implication is therefore the same as before. AU. embracing State-functions characterize a low social type; and progress to a higher social type is marked by relin quishments of functions.

§ 370. Most readers will feel little faith in these general conclusions. It will be needful to enforce them by' argu ments more readily appreciated. In § 5 I named the fact that the welfare of any living body depends on the due proportioning of its several parts to their several duties; and that the needful balance of power among the parts is effected by a constant competition for nutriment, and the flowing to each of a quantity corresponding to its work. That competition throughout the industrial parts of a society achieves a kindred balance in a kindred way, needs no proof; and that social needs at large are best subserved by carrying out, wherever possible, this relation between e-ffort and benefit, is manifest. Now in all those non-governmental co-operations consti tuting the greater part of modern social life, this balancing is spontaneously effected. I need not dwell on the principle of supply and demand as displayed throughout our indus trial organization j and I need not do more than hint that this THE LIMITS. OF STATE-DUTIES. 231 same principle holds throughout all other non-governmental agencies-bodies for voluntary religious teaching, philan thropic associations, trades unions. Among all such, activity and growth, or quiescence and decay, occur according as they do or do not fulfil wants that are felt. Nor is this all.

A truth which cannot be too much emphasized is that under this stress of competition, each of these agencies is impelled to perform the greatest amount of function in return for a given amount of nutrition. Moreover, competition constantly impels it to improve; to which end it not only utilizes the best appliances but is anxious to get the best men. The direct relation between· efficiency and prosperity obliges all voluntary co-operations to work at high pressure. Contra:riwise, the compulsory co-operations by which governmental actions are effected, instead of direct relations between function and nutrition, show us highly indirect relations. Public departments, all of them. regimented after the militant fashion, all supported by taxes forcibly taken, and severally responsible to their heads, mostly appointed for party reasons, are not immediately dependent for their Jneans of living and growing on those whom they are designed to benefit. There is no fear of bankruptcy to prompt efficient and raJpid performance of duty; there is no taking away of business by an opponent who does work more economically; '~here is no augmenting of profits by adopting improvements, still less by devising them. Every kind of defect results. As was lately said to me by one official concerning another, on whose remissness I was commenting-(( Oh, he gets good pay and doesn't want to be bothered." In consequence of this indirectness of relation between benefits yielded and payments received, governmental agencies may continue to exist and draw funds for years, and sometimes for generations, after they have ceased to be of service; and when they are weak, or careless, or slow, the ine:ffi~iency has to be rectified by pressure exercised through the governmental machine-a, 232 lUSTICE.

machine so cumbrous and complex that only great pressure exercised with great patience can effect the needful change. § 371. Every day's papers thrust illustrations of these truths before the world, in relation even to those essential functions which we have no alternative but to devolve on the State. The ill-working of the appliances for national protection and individual protection is a ceaseless scandal. Army-administration is exemplified by the retention of a royal duke as commander-in-chief, by the multiplicity of g~nerals made in satisfaction of class-interests, by promotion that is only in small measure determined by merit. It is again exemplified by keeping our o"vn officers in ignorance of improvements which foreign officers are allowed to see; and by the repeated leaking out of secrets through employes in the arsenals. And it is yet again exemplified by the astounding disclosures respecting stores-bayonets that bend, swords that break, cartridges that jam, shells of wrong sizes; so that, as said by the Inquiry Commission of 1887 :-" The present system is directed to no definite object; it is regulated by no definite rules; It makes no regular stated provision, either for the proper supply and manufacture of warlike stores, or for enforcing the respon sibility of those who fail to make them properly, or for ascertaining the fact that they are made improperly."

That the Navy keeps the Army in countenance, complaint, inquiry, and exposure, continually remind us. All remember the story of the naval evolutions on the occasion of the J nbilee, when, without the stress of a sea-fight, more than a dozen vessels, great and small, came to grief in one way or other-collisions, explosions, breakdowns of engines, and so forth. And then there were the smaller but equally significant disasters which, in the same year, attended the cruise of 24 torpedo boats down chan.nel and back; during which 8 of the 24 were more or less disabled. Vessels that will not steer, guns that burst) ships that run aground, are THE LIMITS OF STATE-DUTIES. 233 frequently reported; and then, furnishing a significant contrast, wben a first-class man-of-war, the Sultan, after running on a rock, sinks and is regarded by the Admiralty as lost, it is raised again and saved by a private company.

To which add that the report concerning Admiralty-admin istration issued in March, 1887, showed that "such manage ment as is here disclosed would bring any commercial firm into the Bankruptcy Court in a few months." Similarly is it with the ma~ing and administration of laws. So constant is the exposure of folly and failure, that the public sense of them is searedo In parliamentary procedure we meet with the extremes of utter recklessness and irrational carefulness: now a bill is hurried through all its stages without debate, and now, after careful con sideration has delayed its enactment, it is dropped and has to pass through the whole process again next session. While we see the amending and re-amending of clauses aimed to meet every contingency, we see the whole Act when passed thrown on to the immense chaotic heap of preceding legislation, making its confusion worse con founded. Complaint and denunciation lead to nothing.

Here, in 1867, is the report of a commission formed of leading lawyers and statesmen-Cranworth, Westbury, Oairns, and others-urging the need for a digest as a preparation for a code; and urging that it is a national duty to provide citizens with a means of knowing the laws they have to conform to. Yet, though the question has been'occasionally raised, nothing has been done-nothing, that is, by the State, but something by private individuals : Chitty's Equity Inde:e and Sir James Stephen's Digest of the Oriminal Law, have to some extent taught legislators what has been done 'by themselves and theOir predecessorso Then there is the fact, to the monstrosity of which custom blinds us, that even law,yers do not know what the bearings of a new Act are until judges have made decisions under it; while the judges themselves exclaim· against the bungling 234 JUSTICE. legislation they have to interpret: one judge saying of a clause that he "did not believe its meaning was compre hended either by the draughtsman who drew it" or ((the parliament that adopted it," and another declaring that" it was impossible for human skill to find words more calcu lated to puzzle everybody." As a natural consequence we have every day appeals and again appeals-decisions being reversed and re-reversed, and the poorer litigants being compelled to submit by the wealthier ones, who can ruin them by going from court to court. The incredible dis proportion of sentences, too, is a daily scandal. Here a hungry harvester is sent to prison for eating a pennyworth of tbe field-beans he was cutting, a,s happened at Faversham; and there a rich man who has committed a violent assault has to pay a fine wbich to him is trivial. Still more disgraceful is the treatment of men charged with un proved offences, and men who have been proved innocent: these being kept in prison for months before trials which show them to be guiltless, and those, after bearing long punishments before their innocence is shown, being granted ((free pardons" and no compensation for inflicted sufferings and damaged lives.

Even the smallest daily transaction-the paying of a cabman or the purchase of a neck,-tie-serves to remind one of official bungling; for how can it be better shown than by the coinage? In this we have frequent changes where changes are undesirable. We have mixed systems: decimal, duodecimal, and nondescript. Until recently we had two scarcely-distinguishable pieces for threepence and four .. pencej we had, four years since, the JUbilee-sixpence with· drawn because it simulated a half-sovereign so exactly that it needed only to be gilt to pass for one. We have the lately-introduced four-shilling piece, only by deliberate inspection distinguishable from a five-shilling piece. In ll10st cases there lacks the one needful piece of information -the declared value of the coin. And once more there THE LIMITS OF ST4TE-DUTIES. 235 are no proper adjustments to the demands: everywhere there is an unsatisfied cry for small change.

So that the inferen,ce which the general laws of organ .. ization compel us to draw, is inductively verified in respect of the three all-essential departments of the State, as well as in a subordinate department, by evidence which every day increases. § 372. There are two leading implications of this general , truth above exhibited in the abstract, and above exemplified in the concrete. If people at large tolerate the extravagance, the gtupidity, the carelessness, the obstructiveness, daily exemplified in the military, naval, and legal adm.inistrations; much more will they tolerate Fhem when exemplified in departments which are neither so vitally important nor oceupy so -large a space in the public mind. The vices o£ officialism must exist throughout public -organizations of every kind, and may be expected to go to greater extremes where the neces .. sity for checking them is less pressing. Not only, then, may we rationally conclude that when, beyond its essential functions, the State undertakes non-essential functions, it will perform these equally ill, but we may rationally con..

elude that its performance of them will be still worse. The second implication is that the ill-performance of essential functions is itself made more extreme by the absorption of attention and energy in discharging non .. essential functions. It cannot but be that the power to conduct a few businesses is diminished by the addition of many other businesses to be conducted j and it cannot but be that when public criticism is directed to shortcomings of many kinds it must be less efficient than when directed to shortcomings of few kinds. If, instead o£ being almost wholly occupied with other things, Parliament were occupied almost wholly with the administrations for external protection and internal protection, no one will dare to deny 236 JUSTICE. that these would be more efficient than now; and no one will dare to assert that, if discussions on the platform and in the press were almost wholly about these administrations instead of being alnlost wholly about other things, the public would tolerate such inefficiency of them as it now does.

Thus whether we wish to avoid the multiplication of ill performed functions, or whether we wish to have the essential functions better performed, the requirement is the same-limitation. Specialization of functions directly improves the discharge of each function by adjusting the organ to it, and indirectly improves the discharge of other functions by permitting each to acquire an appro priate organ. § 3'73. The foregoing reasons for concluding that in the adrninistration of social affairs the just is also the politic, will weigh but little with the. majority. The beliefs in natural law and the universality of causation are not very strong even in the scientific world when vital phenomena are in question; and they are very feeble in the outer world. Only such of the above arguments as are based on facts daily published are likely to tell; and the adequacy of evell these will be denied by most.

It will, therefore, be needful to reinforce them by others drawn from evidences directly releyant.. Let us devote a chapter to these~ CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LIMITS OF STATE-DUTIES OONTINUED. § 374. "In simple matters direct perception cannot be trusted: to insure trustworthy conclusions we must use some ulode of measurement by which the imperfections of the senses may be· corrected. Contrariwise, in complex matters unaided contemplation suffices: we can adequately sum up and balance the evidences without reference to any general truth." Does an; one smile at thIS absurd proposition? Why should he do so ? The probabilities are ten to one that, under a disguised form, this proposition forms part of his tacitly-accepted creed. If he hears of an artizan who pooh-poohs thermometers, and says he can tell better by his hand what is the right temperature for the liquid he uses, the reader, knowing that the sensation of heat or cold which anything yields varies greatly according to tho temperature of the hand, sees how absurd is this self confidence resulting from want of knowledge. But he sees no absurdity in the attempt to reach without any guiding principle a right conclusion respecting the consequences of some action affecting in multitudinous ways millions of peopIe: here there needs no kind of ill eter by which to test the correctness of direct impressions. If, fo~ instance, the question is whether he shall advocate the system of payment by results in State-aided schools) he thinks it 238 JUSTICE.